Please, please do not let the current little foibles of my girls be an indication of their future selves. If they are, Rachel will just be a total thug, no surprise there, (although I never thought the phrase, ankle-biter, would ring so true – she literally tried to chomp down through my trouser leg mid tantrum at the weekend,) and Emilia seems to be heading for a future as a stripping lush.
When she comes home from school, it is possible to follow her trail around the house of clothes littered – dropped where they fell on their removal, a tie draped here, a cardigan discarded on the floor there. I thought I’d trained them to put bags, shoes and coats away at least, but apparently this rule doesn’t seem to apply to the rest of her attire. (We do insist she go round collecting them up again.) It is just the gay abandon with which they come off that is the cause for concern. She is actually not quite as bad as Rachel at times, who last week swung her ballet cardigan several times round her head before flinging it at the ballet teacher, and stating ‘I want do BALLET!’ as if to say ‘and this isn’t it.’
When Emilia is changing for her ballet class, she stands on a high side board posing and looking at herself in the mirror on the opposite wall, and whilst I am rummaging in her bag, I suddenly find myself with a skirt on my head, then her tights and other items raining down on me from above.
On New Year’s Day, when a lot of the rest of the world has sworn off booze, Emilia demands Ribena in a wine glass, so that she would appear to be drinking a glass of red wine with her lunch. I actually remember wanting to do this myself when I was a little girl...but not at breakfast! This time it was Elderflower cordial she wanted watered down enough to resemble white wine, to convince her brothers that is what she was drinking. As is often the way when my instinct is to say “No, you can’t’’ to something, I checked myself and reasoned actually why not? – apart from the fact that anyone looking through the window to see a seven year old quaffing white wine with her Cheerios at 8.30am might be tempted to call social services.
Actually, come to think of it, my sister and I did also ask for Ribena/wine in the morning, as we used to play ‘Communion’, in a bid to get out of going to Church. I don’t suppose my Mother envisaged us as future Nuns or Vicars just because of our liking for this game. It involved setting up an Altar and distributing the bread and wine to each other with the appropriate utterings. We tried to persuade her we were having our own service and therefore needn’t bother to attend the real one with her.
It does seem to be true that a lot of children’s behaviour is just imitation, and clearly my Mum set a better example to follow than we are, but the ironic thing is Mark and I don’t even drink at home that much. Mark likes to make a point of not getting any alcohol on the Tesco shop, but prefers to make a special trip into town to buy it if he wants to drink. It is a good policy, as he does at least feel he deserves one, after taking the time and trouble to get the beer in. Rachel mishears and refers to them as ‘Daddy’s beards.’ Ben, when aged about 3, also misheard him once when Mark commented after a busy day out, that he was looking forward to getting home and opening a coupl’a beers.
“Polar bears!” Ben said excitedly ‘What polar bears. Where? He said, polar bears!”
Ben also gave the nursery staff the impression we were very free and easy with the drink in our house, as he hospitably offered them wine or beer when role playing in the home corner.
When I arrived to collect him, I was told of the incident, but far from being disapproving, the nursery worker thought she would now be angling for an invitation over to our house if that was what was regularly on offer there.
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